Police in Bentonville, Arkansas want to extract information from an Amazon Echo to help in their investigation into a murder committed in November 2015. Authorities have sent Amazon a warrant requesting data from the Echo owned by James Andrew Bates, who is accused of strangling and drowning Victor Collins in a hot tub.
Police are treating the Amazon Echo, a hands-free speaker that works through a virtual assistant, as key evidence in their ongoing investigation, TechCrunch reports. According to police records, the Echo at Bates's house could have streamed music and wirelessly transmitted it during the night of Collins's murder.
In particular, police are looking for audio recordings that the Echo might have stored before and during the date Collins was murdered, USA Today reports. Aside from audio recordings, they also requested Amazon to provide them with transcribed and other text records related to transactions between Bates's Echo and Amazon.com on November 21 and 22, when the murder took place.
Amazon has refused to give data to police. The company said it will not release customer information and respond to broad requests without a binding legal demand.
Bates was charged with first-degree murder after Collins was found dead in Bates's hot tub. Authorities said Collins died mainly of strangulation. Bates, who has denied the allegation, is currently out on bail.
How much data police can get and how useful the information would be is unclear. TechCrunch notes that although the Echo's always listens to commands through a system of microphones, it waits for users to say the wake word - "Alexa" - for it to respond to commands.
More so, even if the Echo is always listening, it is not always recording. The device also stores less than 60 seconds of recorded sound. When recording new audio, the Echo erases older ones.
The issue has raised concerns about the implications for personal privacy of owning internet-connected devices called the Internet of Things or IoT. According to USA Today, privacy advocates are concerned over the possibility the devices record their users' movements and actions and that the data can be retrieved later on.
It's another matter, of course, when it can help solve a murder. Do you think Amazon should cooperate with authorities in this case?
